The CEB Study Bible is a well designed and excellently written study bible that distinguishes itself from the crowd by taking a more open-minded approach to the historicity, date of composition, and authorship of debatable sections of the Bible. However, the appeal of this study bible may be narrowed by its inextricably being tied to the CEB, a translation whose eager pursuit of a laudable goal (to produce a truly fresh translation free from wrongly embedded conservative Evangelical ideas) unfortunately results in uneven quality.

The defining characteristic of the Common English Bible translation is its willingness to revisit and re-render traditional translations of well known biblical passages. While this is often a strength, it seems to be driven by a desire among those who commissioned the translation to distance themselves from conservative evangelicalism, and in many places this results in replacing good (albeit traditional) translations with highly questionable ones for no apparent scholarly reason.

BSE is partnering with The Promise Church, Houston, to present “Your Bible Study Tool Belt”, a workshop that teaches you how to use commonly available reference tools to enhance your personal Bible study.

Question: AH! I just discovered that some Christian groups have more/fewer books in their Bible, and now I’m afraid I can’t believe anything anymore! What do I do? Short Answer: DON’T PANIC! We all agree about the New Testament. In the Old Testament … it’s complicated, but the positions are all reasonable.

It is possible to read a text from a perspective that seems unnatural to the text. In doing so what we actually do is critique ourselves as readers and force ourselves to see new things in the text. There are productive and unproductive ways to do this, but it can be useful for Bible study.

In Amos 3:3-8, the prophet uses a series of rhetorical questions to deliver a warning to Israel about the inescapability of God’s coming judgment. But he also tells us about prophecy itself – that it carries with it an implied invitation to repent and be saved from the otherwise inescapable judgment.

The oracle against Judah in Amos 2:4-5 is typically regarded by scholars as a later insertion due to its use of Deuteronomic language and the apparent vagueness of its accusation. This article argues that dating a text late solely because of the presence of so-called “Deuteronomic” language is logically circular, and it proposes a reading of the first two chapters of Amos that makes the oracle against Judah an integral part of the passage’s rhetoric rather than an obligatory insertion.

Amos, Hosea, Micah – An Archaeological Commentary, by Philip J. King, is a commentary about the 8th century BC world of the earliest of the written prophets that takes its data from the field of archaeology. It is difficult to find a similar book that is so accessibly and compactly presented.

Luke 2:14 has well known variant readings (is “good will” nominative or genitive?), and despite scholarship preferring one over the other, the choice between these readings is not clear. How do variant readings and translations affect our understanding of the inspiration of the Bible? What if ambiguities weren’t something God intended to work around but something he intended to work within.